The present disclosure relates to creating combined classifier stages that leverage strengths from individual classifiers to improve overall decision-making accuracy of an inquiry.
A classifier is an algorithm for deciding, for an input case, to which one class among multiple candidate classes the input case belongs. Depending on the application context, the input case can be a piece of text, an image, a sound sequence, a set of numbers, or any other representation of a piece of information, an object, an action, or an event.
Question answer systems typically employ classifiers into a pipeline to identify candidate answers from a knowledge base. Prior to using a question answer system to answer questions, system developers proceed through a process of selecting classifiers that are best suited to include in the question answer system's pipeline. During this process, system developers train the classifiers against a set of training samples, such as by training linear regression models in the classifiers. The classifiers that produce the most amount of correct decisions relative to the training samples are typically included into the question answer system's pipeline for subsequent use.